I slowly parted my lips.
So, a nightmare. He had asked if I had a nightmare I wanted to forget.
I tried to answer that it seemed so, but my voice wouldn't come out. Xenon's lips were so close that if I spoke, my hot breath would undoubtedly reach him first.
Xenon moved first, instead of me who stood frozen with my mouth shut.
"Lie down first."
His lips, which had seemed about to touch mine at any moment, drew away.
Xenon, who had moved as far away as he had suddenly approached, pushed me toward the bedding. Pushed by that force, I sat down on the bed with a thud and frowned.
That was because I realized his tone just now was like dealing with a child.
"Like coaxing a child who won't listen..."
Just as I lifted my head to express my sour feelings, Xenon braced one hand against the bed head and bent his waist toward me.
"If there's something else you desire, please say so now."
Perhaps because he was looking down from above, Xenon's shadowed face felt strangely unfamiliar.
If Xenon pushed just a little more like this, I would be helplessly pushed back, and our posture would become quite indecent.
As I blinked and stared up at Xenon, he tilted his head slightly.
"Or should I read the room?"
It was an question, remarkably plain.
I climbed onto the bed with as calm an expression as I could manage.
When I slipped under the covers and lay there with only my head poking out, Xenon, who had been watching steadily, let out a deflated laugh.
"Lord Anelli, you look so experienced one moment, then strangely cute the next."
Xenon, who said that, was usually so clumsy yet sometimes astonishingly brazen.
'Maybe the part about me being his first love is a lie.'
With a sullen expression, I forced myself to speak calmly.
"If we delay for no reason, you'll be tired too."
"Staying up one night won't cause any disaster. Well, Lord Anelli will be tired, though."
"What? Why would I..."
I started to ask unconsciously, then closed my lips. Xenon chuckled as if he expected that and sat down beside me with a much more relaxed face.
"Is this nightmare similar to the previous ones too?"
"...No."
I pulled the covers up to my chin. The sensation of being buried in the soft covers wasn't bad.
Of course, that wasn't all. Xenon's gaze looking down at me from close by calmed my uneasy heart.
It was a ridiculous sight, enough to be absurd. Getting frightened by mere illusions. Ending up cowering like this from being startled by such a preposterous dream of being left alone in a world where everything had disappeared.
It was embarrassing to explain in detail to Xenon.
"The problem was Rusalka's final attack, right?"
Surprisingly, Xenon hit the mark instantly.
When I widened my eyes unconsciously, he clicked his tongue lightly as if he knew it would be so.
"How did you know?"
"I told you your expression wasn't good. What kind of dream was it to make you like that? Did Rusalka transform into a trash human and spout nonsense again?"
"...Maxel didn't appear."
He seemed to have thought I would naturally talk about Maxel. Xenon raised his eyebrows as if surprised.
I gazed at Xenon's face and spoke bluntly.
"This time, it mimicked you."
"Mimicked me?"
"It made me hold a sword and told me to stab itself."
Though accurately, it had induced a situation where I had to stab.
I rummaged through my memories and spat out Rusalka's words here and there.
"It said I allowed the destruction of all living things. Ah, it also called me a monster. Said I would die lonely and sick."
As I spoke calmly, Xenon's expression changed moment by moment. His initially puzzled face turned to shock in the end.
"That crazy monster, saying such things with whose face...! So did you finish it off?"
His voice was as full of trembling as his violently shaking pupils.
I answered with an unruffled face.
"I didn't stab it."
Xenon closed his lips with a subtle expression. After a moment of silence, he asked in an even lower tone.
"...But wasn't it a situation where you had to stab?"
"Right. Because the Rusalka mimicking you had eaten what I wanted. I should have split its belly with the sword."
Xenon's face turned pale. Without a doubt, he must have imagined exactly the situation I had just described.
I chuckled small as I watched Xenon's expression.
"But if I killed that thing that looked like you, I would..."
If I killed the Rusalka that was mimicking Xenon, it felt like I would be left alone in that desolate wasteland.
"You will eventually be alone, abandoned by everyone and dying lonely and sick."
Rusalka's whisper full of malice surfaces.
That was what Lilia had said to me.
The words I heard from Lilia before being dragged to prison. The situation I was in when I was on the execution platform. The dream was utterly fantastical yet subtly realistic.
The nightmare Rusalka showed me was an ending I had already experienced once.
It seems I was still afraid of those things I thought were all in the past.
"In the dream, the Dullahans left me, and the only thing remaining by my side was the Rusalka mimicking you."
I trailed off and rubbed my cheek against the covers.
Was it because the covers were soft? Or because my whole body was wrapped in warmth?
Or perhaps because of Xenon, who kept his eyes on me while showing such entertaining reactions?
My body, frozen with tension, relaxed languidly, and my sharply raised nerves felt like they were loosening.
"The dream I had from Rusalka's final attack was the process of being left alone like that in a destroyed world."
As I explained in a small voice like a whisper, Xenon narrowed his brow.
"Good thing we eradicated Rusalka."
"Yes."
"Rare monster this and that, they're things that should just be exterminated."
Xenon calmly reached out his hand. He naturally brushed aside my disheveled hair.
As the hair that had been awkwardly blocking my vision disappeared, Xenon's face became even clearer.
"So how did you wake up in the end? You said you didn't slit its belly."
I knew that what was before me then was a Rusalka mimicking Xenon's form, and I knew that even if I killed it immediately, I wouldn't be left all alone.
Even so, I couldn't put strength in the hand holding the sword. At first, I was truly at a loss.
It was somehow more terrifying to know it was a dream yet not have the courage to wake up, than to wander not knowing it was a dream.
"You don't necessarily have to split the belly to take out what's inside."
A hint of puzzlement brushed past Xenon's eyes. I narrowed my eyes slightly at him and smiled.
"Because I can make it vomit everything out."
"How..."
Xenon couldn't finish his words. It was because I reached out my finger toward his quivering lips.
Xenon had been leaning his upper body toward me to listen to my words. So I could reach out and touch his face.
I traced the wrinkles of his lips caught on my fingertips, then dug a little deeper inside.
"Here, like this. I put my finger in. And forced it to vomit it out."
The moist and damp inside of his lips was felt. Since Xenon had his lips slightly parted, it wasn't difficult to stroke the smooth inner flesh.
Xenon, who had been obediently offering his lips, started to show movement when my fingertip collided with his solid lower teeth.
Just as I thought his lips were opening wider, he lightly bit my finger. The finger that had been fidgeting on the outside was sucked in up to two joints.
The sensation brushing between my helpless fingers made my shoulders tremble on their own.
In the end, unable to bear the ticklishness, I quickly pulled out my hand. However, I couldn't even get far from Xenon's lips before my hand was caught by him.
"...You're too fearless."
Xenon, who had lightly wet his own lower lip with his tongue, sighed with his eyes narrowed. He didn't seem to have any intention of letting go of my hand.
Actually, it was all too clear to me. For someone pretending to be composed and making up his voice, Xenon's gaze had become quite persistent.
"Should I be afraid of you?"
"Of course not. But I'm a bit afraid."
"Of me?"
"Yes."
Xenon lightly kissed my hand that he was holding firmly. His lips pressed or nibbled on my fingers, the back of my hand, and my palm as he pleased.
I felt the ticklishness climbing up my arm and spreading throughout my whole body.
When I let out a small laugh unconsciously, Xenon mischievously bit the tip of my thumb.
"I'm scared of even myself."
His low voice sounded like a confession. He slid the hand he was holding and this time grabbed my wrist.
Just as he pressed the inner wrist where my pulse was beating with his thumb, his lips touched that spot.
Where the tip of his tongue had brushed as if tasting my skin, a damp trace remained. When it met the air, only that part's sensation felt particularly prominent.
I let out a trembling breath and spoke.
"Your breathing sounds... it might help with sound sleep."
At those words, Xenon, who had his lips buried in the inside of my arm, laughed low. Then he suddenly leaned his body.
"Then I should let you hear more."
A large hand that dug into my side hair gently supported my cheek and ear.
Our parted lips met. The movements felt somewhat rushed, as if the consistent leisure and slowness until just now had all been a disguise.
Each time our rubbing lips missed each other, a shallow moan of unknown origin was heard. That rumbling sound elevated my mood and urged my heart to pound.
He pressed down so strongly that I worried I might literally be devoured. Only when my lips were so numb I couldn't feel them anymore did I finally get a moment to catch my breath.
Of course, pulling away didn't mean we had completely separated.
At a distance close enough to touch again at any time, Xenon with his flushed face made a pained sound.
"Lord Anelli is difficult."
Words barely spat out in a husky voice were strangely mixed with complaint.
I looked at his trembling eyelids from close by and lifted my arm.
As I swept up his recklessly disheveled red hair, his smooth forehead and eyebrows that had been hidden behind curly locks were briefly revealed then disappeared.
The room that had been cool was now warm. Or perhaps my body temperature had risen too much.
My rapidly beating heart wouldn't calm down at all. To the point I could no longer pretend not to know.
Ah, I had become weak again.
Even after experiencing the foolish and stupid Anelli Roam, I again...
"Emotions will become weaknesses, and at the decisive moment, they might return as a dagger."
Xenon frowned. When I gently rubbed that spot with my thumb, he soon relaxed and made a gentle expression.
I laughed in emptiness. Pretending to be docile, this man was seducing me.
"But that's not bad."
Perhaps I might even like it.
I couldn't say the last words.
Because my breath quickly ran short from the urgently pressing lips.